| Higher-Order Theme |
Off-court training for tennis should be specific |
P9: “I think you’ve got to train to stimulate the adaptations required to handle the (match play) landscape”
P7: “…it (training) should be closer to that representation than it currently is” |
| Lower-Order Theme |
Individual differences need to be considered |
P8: “So I have a look at a player’s style, as well, and how they play the game. And (then) what capacities I need to further develop” |
| Building a foundation of strength is important |
P13: “(When) it’s a young…junior player. I’m a strong believer of their overall athleticism and strength. So I want to go a pretty balanced program and not too much focus on those specific stress on the body yet” |
| The intensity of current training is not always adequate |
P12: “There’s a lot of training that is not at the speeds or the loads that are representative of what the athlete needs…or even the body positions. There’s a lot of general training that gets done”
P10: “You can do some sprints with resistance bands…but an athlete with 10 years of strength experience…it’s a little bit of a joke. The load on the muscles…it’s not really killing the muscles the way they want to have an impact on it” |
| Coaches are inclined to program too many gym movements in the vertical plane |
P5: “From my experience, coaches have a tendency to focus on mainly exercises in the vertical plane because it’s traditional… tennis involves a lot of lateral and anterior-posterior movement, so I think it’s important to maximize this kind of movement in the gym”
P8: “I think it’s too much on the vertical plane and we don’t address the horizontal plane” |
| Higher-Order Theme |
Our understanding of the demands of tennis are limited from a mechanical standpoint |
P8: “I think (there is) a lack of understanding of physical preparation coaches in tennis on the actual demands of tennis” |
| Lower-Order Theme |
Coaches are much more comfortable describing the physiological demands vs the mechanical demands of tennis |
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| The force application demands of the lower limb are not well understood |
P2: “All of us in a way on this force and acceleration/deceleration, we’re making lots and lots of educated guesses”
P4: “Yeah, I really struggle with it to be honest (the force application demands). I really struggle to kind of answer and define it” |
| Understanding the force application demands of the lower limb is of interest to coaches |
P2: “The forces are very interesting… so I think this (the lower limb force application demands) immediately becomes a framework of training”
P1: “if you were writing a power program or rate of force production program, the application of force in these directions should be trained and emphasised in a particular way, and I think it would be really fantastic relevant information… also in movement training… it would help you construct on court training sessions that apply to the sports more appropriately” |
| Higher-Order Theme |
The activity of the lower limb is not well understood |
P12: “Monitoring load is important. The challenge is, we don’t have a really great strategy to monitor load in tennis currently… I think the field-based technologies that are out there are giving some misleading information at best”
P1: “In my opinion, the number one issue which stops player’s careers is an inappropriate amount of external load over the years, and not enough management of load over the years, over a player’s career” |
| Lower-Order Theme |
Global Positioning System units are used frequently by coaches, however there are limitations of this technology |
P1: “Because the movements are so small and GPS technologies are just not quite up to speed with a sport that has so many small movements” |
| The ability to delineate the upper and the lower limb load is of interest, but currently no technology exists that is able to capture this |
P2: “I really see speed coming through the roof… So we’re going to have to understand the leg loads… tennis is a 70% leg sport”
P12: “I think that is where everyone is trying to get to now. And there’s some lab-based technologies and camera based systems that are getting better at this, they still, I wouldn’t say are practical enough or easy to use with athletes on a consistent basis” |
| A lack of context exists surrounding the data that is currently captured at the moment |
P1: “I think we are not able to have really good quality conversations with coaches around the data that we’re getting, all we can do is infer things” |
| The symmetry between load on the lower limbs is not well understood |
P5: “It’s an asymmetric sport…and I’m not sure about the differences in terms of load from these two legs, when he’s playing, so that would be interesting too”
P13: “Honestly on the tennis court, I can’t tell (loading differences between legs)” |